If you’re not one of those lucky few who received your copies of the 4E books, but you haven’t seen enough previews of the new rules yet, we’ve got something to show you!
Sent to us by Wizards of the Coast, we have two pages from the Player’s Handbook. It looks to be part of the combat section, and covers Areas of Effect (Blast, Burst, Wall) and Choosing a target (including range rules and seeing/targeting.)
Of particular usefulness for me are the diagrams of how Blast and Burst work. And even though I’ve seen it before, the Elven Ranger pic in it is pretty awesome looking.
Feelings on the blast vs. the classic cone?
I feel that it gets rid of the “maximizing cone” placement issue, but keeps some of the same feel if not a little less literal. I really like the feeling of the dragonborn spewing fire/acid/whatever over a 3×3 square area.
I’m so glad I get to whet my whistle early.
Well, it’s easy to adjudicate, and it’s basically the same concept as a cone. Having a separate cone for each size wasn’t working (and I’ll have to find someone to take my 3.5 cone templates off my hands) so the options were either something like blast, or just make a “one-size” fits all cone. What they ended up with was probably the best option.
I do like the simplification…but I can’t help but imagine fireball as more of a firecube…
Rev. Mike: In 3rd Edition did you call it a pixelated Fireball?
Really the square area just takes into account that partially covered squares that a true circle or cone would create are considered effected.
The pic of your mom was pretty awesome looking to.
out of left field!
@Bartoneus…
True, but they did the same in 3rd edition…the shape of the area effect doesn’t really matter quite so much, they just made it easier on gamers to use…though the corners of the effect on a big enough scale wouldn’t be effected at all…
Perhaps the fire makes an appearance outside of the affected area, but is only intense enough to do damage in those set squares…it’s just a different way of thinking about the whole thing…
Dammit…I used the word “effected”…darn lack of an ability to edit my posted comments…
I’ll try to get editable comments working soon.
Aren’t the square area of effects a direct result of diagonal movement costing the same as linear movement? So the effect hits “everything within 3 squares” which is a square in 4e because diagonals cost one. If diagonals cost 1-2-1-2 like in 3e (or 2 like in Saga), you’d get more circle shaped effects.
In that regard, using the older movement rules in 4e should work just fine. Theoretically :p
highbulp: Yep, I think you’re right that it’d be easy enough to use the old diagonal rules (or any number of other options) without too many changes. It might change shifting around a bit.
But I love the diagonals are 1 rule, so I won’t be testing this. 🙂
Yea, the new diagonal movement bit looks like another factor in the new area effect rules…still though, I imagine the effects were intended to be circle shaped in 3rd edition, rather than their shape resulting from the diagonal rule applied to a square conjecture…which would just be odd…
Not to put words in anyone’s mouth…I’m just sayin’…
Oh, and using the SAGA edition “diagonals are 2” rule? That makes circles turn into diamonds instead.
And diamonds are much better than squares.